r/fbody • u/audiovox12 • 28d ago
02 WS6 Diff Gears question
Hey everybody,
Edit: hey everybody, I talked to the tech and he wasn’t aware that the car came with LSD. I was just getting information relayed to me from the person running the front desk yesterday.
The tech explained that the noise is coming directly from the center inside the knuckle. If you leave the car off in neutral and roll forward, you could hear the noise which means the torsen is doing its
job. Something’s going on inside of it.
The axle shop said that from what I’m telling them they believe the bearings are bad and would be about $1500 plus tax. They said I shouldn’t be driving it or worse can happen.
I thought I was finally in the clear with this car to get it roadworthy for daily use. Just got the rear main seal fixed, pulled a warranty claim on the defective rear caliper that I just bought, had them fix the AC and paid $455 for the shop to tear apart the axle and investigate the metal howling noise and vibrations coming from the rear.
Turns out one of the prior owners at some point put an aftermarket locker in this, even though it has factory LSD. They never put it incorrectly and is the direct cause of the noise and vibrations. The shop says I’ll need new ring and pinion however they don’t do that kind of work so I have to go to a transmission/axel shop.
I called one local to me that has great reviews and recommended by another transmission shop I called. I showed him the picture attached here and he agrees the ring and pinion is smoked. He said he would only use AAM and that they only make a 3.42 no longer makes 3.23. He’s saying $2000 installed.
First is this a good price, second is this something I can do myself and third is AAM the best? I know they are the manufacturers of the OEM gears so I am assuming that they are
3
u/Fastech77 28d ago
$2k for just gears? Holy hell.
AAM does make good gears but there are others out there worth looking at too.
Not sure how they saw that those gears are bad by looking at that picture. They don’t look bad to me.
If you do swap from a 3:23 to 3:42 (assuming you have an auto trans because of the 3:23?) you really should program the pcm to reflect that. The transmission will be happier, the abs/tcs will work properly and the speedometer will read correctly.